Spencer is working hard to disassociate himself from one of his fans-Anders Breivik

Even if you’re a Muslim who is heading and escalating the drone program against the enemies of the USA (killing many innocents in the process), you risk Spencer labeling you an “evil suspect Mooslim.”

That’s exactly what Spencer did recently on his blog in response to a Washington Post profile on the leader of the CIA’s drone program, “Roger” who also happens to be Muslim. (H/T: BA, JD)

A rational individual may actually criticize the substance of the Washington Post profile of “Roger.” A rational individual may choose to point out that the drone program has killed thousands of innocents, destabilized whole regions, and probably endangered the security of the USA further, maybe for years to come.

Instead, the irrational loony Spencer chose to criticize the “Muslamic” nature of “Roger,” considering the wild possibility that he could actually be an “undercover terrorist.”

This was not the most flagrant looniness from Spencer, he also compared Muslims to Nazis, implying that Muslims are worse:

The question is this: some might liken Roger to a top American official joining the Nazi Party during World War II. Others would liken Roger to a top American official marrying a German immigrant during World War II, and coming under unjust suspicion as a result. German Americans, of course, could oppose and fight against National Socialism unequivocally, without any lingering allegiance to it; Muslims who profess to reject and abhor Islamic terrorism, however, still profess belief in a book and a prophet that have inspired Islamic violence and supremacism worldwide, even among believers who have no institutional connection to al-Qaeda or any other jihad group.

The long Washington Post profile this weekend of a top Central Intelligence Agency official contained a remarkable number of details about the man that heads the Agency’s Counterterrorism Center — remarkable because the man remained shrouded in mystery, referenced only by the first name of his cover identity, “Roger.” Roger chain smokes, swears, worked in Africa, was “pudgy” in his youth, and — oh, yeah — he’s Muslim.

This last fact was too much for one of America’s foremost Islamophobes to bear: to an Islamophobe, Islamic extremist terrorism is inseparable from Islam at large, so how could a Muslim head up a counter-terrorism operation? Leave aside that Roger presides over a CIA unit that he expanded from three unmanned drone aircraft to an entire fleet firing missiles that have crippled militant networks — including Al Qaeda — in Pakistan.

Leave aside that Roger presides over a CIA unit that he brought from having three unmanned drone aircraft to a fleet of them that fire myriad missiles which crippled militant networks — including Al Qaeda — in Pakistan. Never mind that retired Gen. David Petraeus, who now heads up the CIA, said of Roger: “No officer in the agency has been more relentless, focused, or committed to the fight against al-Qaeda than has the chief of the Counterterrorism Center.”

[I]f Islamic supremacists wanted to subvert the U.S. defense against jihad terror, they couldn’t do it more easily than by turning someone in a position like Roger’s. The worst part of this story is that no one is even examining that as a possibility.

Maybe the Post’s Greg Miller simply realized that a guy who blows up the actual dangerous “Islamic supremacists” on a regular basis would make an unlikely candidate to be a plant within the system. Perhaps that’s because, under Roger’s watch, “core al Qaida’s ability to perform a variety of functions — including preserving leadership and conducting external operations — has weakened significantly,” according to Capitol Hill testimony by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

But Spencer knows all that. He even says so:

The Washington Post, of course, follows the mainstream media line that Islam is a Religion of Peace that has been hijacked by a tiny minority of extremists, and so takes for granted that “Roger” has no loyalty issues, and proffers the drone campaign and the killing of bin Laden as proof.

Why still the questions, then? Because, Spencer says, “It is impossible to tell from this how serious he is about Islam.” The obvious implication in Spencer’s thinking is that “serious(ness)” about one’s faith — when that faith is Islam — means disloyalty to the U.S. Spencer should consider that the “mainstream media” might be right about this one.

A new poll suggests that American Christians (unlike Muslims) are likely to put their faith before their country

By David Sirota

If you have the stomach to listen to enough right-wing talk radio, or troll enough right-wing websites, you inevitably come upon fear-mongering about the Unassimilated Muslim. Essentially, this caricature suggests that Muslims in America are more loyal to their religion than to the United States, that such allegedly traitorous loyalties prove that Muslims refuse to assimilate into our nation and that Muslims are therefore a national security threat.

Earlier this year, a Gallup poll illustrated just how apocryphal this story really is. It found that Muslim Americans are one of the most — if not the single most — loyal religious group to the United States. Now, comes the flip side from the Pew Research Center’s stunning findings about other religious groups in America (emphasis mine):

American Christians are more likely than their Western European counterparts to think of themselves first in terms of their religion rather than their nationality; 46 percent of Christians in the U.S. see themselves primarily as Christians and the same number consider themselves Americans first. In contrast, majorities of Christians in France (90 percent), Germany (70 percent), Britain (63 percent) and Spain (53 percent) identify primarily with their nationality rather than their religion. Among Christians in the U.S., white evangelicals are especially inclined to identify first with their faith; 70 percent in this group see themselves first as Christians rather than as Americans, while 22 percent say they are primarily American.

If, as Islamophobes argue, refusing to assimilate is defined as expressing loyalty to a religion before loyalty to country, then this data suggests it is evangelical Christians who are very resistant to assimilation. And yet, few would cite these findings to argue that Christians pose a serious threat to America’s national security. Why the double standard?

Because Christianity is seen as the dominant culture in America — indeed, Christianity and America are often portrayed as being nearly synonymous, meaning expressing loyalty to the former is seen as the equivalent to expressing loyalty to the latter. In this view, there is no such thing as separation between the Christian church and the American state — and every other culture and religion is expected to assimilate to Christianity. To do otherwise is to be accused of waging a “War on Christmas” — or worse, to be accused of being disloyal to America and therefore a national security threat.

Of course, a genuinely pluralistic America is one where — regardless of the religion in question — we see no conflict between loyalties to a religion and loyalties to country. In this ideal America, those who identify as Muslims first are no more or less “un-American” than Christians who do the same (personally, this is the way I see things).

But if our politics and culture are going to continue to make extrapolative judgments about citizens’ patriotic loyalties based on their religious affiliations, then such judgments should at least be universal — and not so obviously selective or brazenly xenophobic.

“Police BlotterScholar” Robert Spencer is always on top of the “Muslim Problem,” to quote Fox News host Bill O’Reilly. Robert Spencer is always on top of telling us what is going wrong within the Muslim community, keeping us up to date on all of the criminal activity within the Muslim community, just like a…police blotter!

One of his latest entries on the blotter is the disturbing story about the naturalized American citizen who was arrested for an alleged plot to attack the nation’s second busiest subway system. Spencer introduces his post thus:

At least one accomplice — he may have had more. So many Misunderstanders of Islam! Why is the Muslim community worldwide such an abysmal failure at communicating the peaceful nature of its religion to its own people?

Funny guy that Spencer, eh? What “Scholar” Robert Spencer did not mention, to no surprise, was that the tip that led the FBI to survey this wacko and monitor his every move, eventually leading to his arrest, came from within the Muslim community itself:

The tip that led to the FBI’s subway bombing sting came from a source in the Muslim community…

So, it was the Muslim community which helped lead the FBI to the alleged subway attacker, the so-called (by Spencer) “D.C. jihadist.” Isn’t that interesting? In fact, the same holds true for the five men from Virginia who were arrested in Pakistan for plotting terrorist attacks. It was their own families who alerted authorities:

The story of the five men became public when the council got their families in touch with the FBI after they left the United States shortly after Thanksgiving without telling their parents. That triggered an international missing persons case. The men were arrested Dec. 8 at the home of Chaudhry’s father, Khalid Farooq Chaudhry, and the terror allegations began immediately.

Now, Spencer asked: “Why is the Muslim community worldwide such an abysmal failure at communicating the peaceful nature of its religion to its own people?”

Clearly, the “scholar” has no idea what he is talking about, because, by turning in one of its own who chose the path of religiously motivated criminality, the Muslim community communicated loudly and clearly to the rest of the world that it is indeed a peaceful, loyal community dedicated to the security of its homeland.

Since news of the heinous Fort Hood massacre at the hands of Major Malik Nidal Hassan first broke out, “Islam Scholar” Robert Spencer, of f**kislam fame, has been like a gluttonous kid in a candy shop, frantically blogging over three dozen times with one goal in mind: slap down the blame on Islam and Muslims at large.

That is precisely the line that every sane responder has warned against. Whether it was the American Muslim leadership, the US military leadership, the mainstream media, or the President of the United States. But to Spencer who is rubbing his hands praying that a massive backlash could befall the American Muslim community, the sanity that he is hearing and seeing from mainstream America is cause for anger, bitterness, and complaints.

For the “Islam Scholar,” everyone including the US Military leadership are “dhimmi” wimps afraid of the Mooslims. Fancy that, a sedentary blogger who barely gets off his backside where he sits day and night punching away at a keyboard sees fit to accuse those who venture on the war frontiers risking their lives to protect this country (including his) of being cowardly sell-out wimps. Continue reading →

The Islamophobic blogosphere has gone buck-wild. Robert Spencer, Pamela Geller, and the rest of the goof troop are pretty ecstatic that Major Nidal Hasan, a Muslim American, killed thirteen U.S. soldiers at Fort Hood. Nothing makes a neo-conservative happier than an attack on American soil; as the family of the victims mourn the dead, the anti-Muslim ideologues gleefully co-opt the situation to market their hate-filled beliefs.

The Islamophobes claim that Major Hasan was simply “being a devout Muslim” when he opened fire on his fellow soldiers. According to them, this is a part of Jihad, an obligation in Islam. As such, the enemy is not just extremists, radicals, or terrorists; but rather, it is Islam itself. It is not then a gross perversion of a religion by zealots that result in such horrific attacks, but rather the exact opposite: it is a faithful understanding of the Islamic religion which results in terrorism. That’s what they claim at least.

There is, according to these anti-Muslim bigots, a conspiracy by Muslim Americans to overtake the country from within. The tactics to do so can be non-violent (“Stealth Jihad”) or overtly violent (such as 9/11 or the Fort Hood Massacre), but the goal is the same: to overthrow the U.S. government, rip the Constitution to shreds, and enact Sharia (Islamic law) in the West. It is for this reason, you–the average American Joe–need to fear your Muslim neighbor.

The Covenant of Security

But experts of the Islamic legal tradition say differently. The Islamic religion commands believers to obey the laws of the land they live in, even if it be one ruled by nonbelievers. Muslim jurists consider citizenship (or visa) to be a covenant (aqd) held between the citizen (or visa holder) and the state, one which guarantees safe passage/security (amaan) in exchange for certain obligations (such as obeying the laws of the land); covenants are considered sacredly binding in Islam. The Quran commands:

And fulfill every covenant. Verily, you will be held accountable with regard to the covenants. (Quran, 17:34)

The Quran condemns those who break covenants as not being true believers:

It is not the case that every time they make a covenant, some party among them throws it aside. Nay! The truth is most of them believe not. (Quran, 2:100)

The Islamic prophet Muhammad described the religious hypocrite as follows:

When he enters into a covenant, he proves treacherous. (Sahih al-Bukhari)

Citizenship (and visa) is called in Islamic legal parlance as a “covenant of security” (aqd al-aman). For over a thousand years, Muslim scholars have rigorously affirmed the binding nature of the covenant of security. This covenant of security can be of two types: (1) a contractual agreement or (2) a customary understanding. Continue reading →